Friday 28 October 2011

Decisions, Decisions

You know, I never knew the writing process could be so difficult.

I'll explain it briefly...then I'll end my little rant. Then I'll probably go to bed. After a bowl of chips.

Here's the deal. Rites of Ascension III is well under way. Jurel and his friends are embroiled in some pretty dicey stuff. So far, so good. The problem lies in that I have more ideas for dealing with their situations than I have pages. I've hit a couple of spots where I'm not sure which one is the best.

Now, there are a few solutions:
1) Eeny meeny miney moe. Yeah, I don't like that one either.
2) Play out each one in my head and write the one that sounds best. This one makes me uncomfortable: I can never be sure I've explored it all until it's down on paper.
3) Write them all. Then pick the best one. Ooh. Time consuming. But at least I'll know.

No one ever said this was gonna be easy.

I'm working on it. It'll be out as soon as I can get it done--to my satisfaction. I want the story to be right!


Thanks for your patience, folks.

Okay, rant done. I'm going to go check up on Metana.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

To Promote or Not to Promote

There is an issue that has been at the forefront of my mind for months now. It's an issue that is a hot topic among indie writers. Can you guess what it is? Can you?

Oh, right. It's in the title.

Promotion. Ads, giveaways, book-signings, interviews, reviews, rinse, repeat. Is it important? Is it necessary? I don't know. But to some authors, it seems that promotion is more important than production. I mean, they spend months or years producing the next great literary work, then when they publish it, they seem to forget that they're writers. They become marketers. They work constantly, obsessively at it, always trying to find that one great technique or method that'll guarantee bestseller status.

I would never argue that promoting is useless. We've all got to get word of our masterpieces out, we've got to let all the readers out there know that we have something they'll love. But it's too much. Too much stress.

Let's see, between my efforts to get as much writing as possible done, a full time job, spending time with my wife and kids, chores, errands, and time to, you know, eat, sleep and have the occasional shower, I don't have a whole lot of time left over to devote to promoting my books.

Yet, I'm doing all right. Thanks to all the fantastic folks out there, I'm doing all right. J.K. Rowling does not fear that I'll break her sales numbers any time soon but readers are finding my books, readers are reading my books and it seems that readers are enjoying my books (and, hopefully, they'll continue to do so for years to come).

Can promoting more (in my case, 'more' would be read as 'at all') help my sales? Maybe. But enough to warrant all the time that I could have used to continue writing the conclusion to Rites of Ascension? Or even the time that I could be wrestling with my son, or playing tea party with my daughter? I don't know. It has worked for some. The big names in indie publishing--John Locke, Amanda Hocking, J.A. Konrath--have certainly benefited from marketing. But for every story I hear of promoting making a real difference, there are fifty stories of authors who have promoted the living heck out of their work and they're struggling to find even a handful of readers.

There's one more thing to consider. I, too, am a consumer. But when I'm online, I don't look at ads. I just don't register them. They appear all over the place and I sail right on by. Assuming I'm normal (according to my lovely Cori, that's a shaky assumption but never mind that) then it seems plausible to extrapolate that many others don't stop what they're doing to read the ads either. So what's the point?

This will raise many eyebrows among the indie crowd--to many, marketing is as important, or more important, than writing. To those, I say, "Hey, it's a free country. Do what you like." I think what I'd like to do is write a few pages and then color a picture with my daughter.